StarWars.com: BB-9E is interesting to me, because you
have the established BB-8 design, and it’s kind of like, how far
can you push it to, basically, make your evil version? So how did
you approach that from the
beginning?

Jake Lunt Davies: This is not wholly my design,
but a combination of some of my design and Luke Fisher’s, who did
K-2SO. Both Luke and I were drawing ideas for BB-9E, the evil
[First Order] droid. I think we both went, “It’s got to be black,
hasn’t it?” [Laughs] So both of our droids were pretty
black. Mine were much more shiny and had this gloss, which carried
over to the final design.

StarWars.com: Yeah, he’s very shiny.

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. Luke’s were a little
bit more matte and I had a slightly more, Apple-esque feel to them.
They were very clean, with sharp lines and a lot more of a Mac
feel. What Luke had got in his one, too, was the head. We both
agreed that the dome-shape of BB-8’s head is actually quite cute.
It’s warm. It’s a nice round shape. And if you add hard edges to
it, it becomes a cone, which is the head Luke drew.

Rian sort of picked up on my designs. I’d done a body. Various
designs, but the one he picked up on had the grille, and it had a
round head with a grille. Rian, I think, said, “I like that head
[Luke’s design] and I like that body.” Because I’d previously
worked on BB-8 on The Force Awakens and had worked
with Josh [Lee] and Matt [Denton], who actually physically made
BB-8, it kind of fell to me to progress with the design and move it
forward, leading the art direction. We had to get the new head to
fit on the same mechanics and, likewise, all the panels to work
with the same mechanics. And what else is there to say on it,
really? It was a combination of Luke’s head and my body.
[Laughs]

StarWars.com: There you go! I wanted to ask where the
grilles came from. They read as threatening.

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. I suppose the
uniformity of each panel is quite nice, having those sort of in
contrast to BB-8. The uniformity of the grille design, I think
helps. The grilles, yeah, they have a menacing thing. The
initial influence was from 1930s vehicle designs — the Chrysler
Airflow and the Peugeot 202 — but I think it led on to a
feeling of prison bars or the menacing faceless grille of a Kendo
mask. These are things, which I suppose you look at and think, “Oh,
intimidating.” The head that I did originally had a grille which
went on the top and around the back. So the sides weren’t grille,
but the grille went from his chin over the top of his head and
around the back of his head. The eye was set behind the grille, so
you could just about see it, and that was his face — – very
influenced by the hidden headlights of the aforesaid Peugeot 202.
That would have been how I originally did it and that was part of
it but, quite rightly, we dropped the round head in favor of the
cone head, which works far better.

StarWars.com: And in terms of dialing in the design,
what was that process like? How do you know if it’s too simple? If
it’s too busy? Because he does have a lot of detailing around his
head and certain detailing on his body.

Jake Lunt Davies: He does. Do you want to know
a little secret about a detailing on the side of his head?

StarWars.com: Sure!

Jake Lunt Davies: Luke had hinted at these
little shut lines. It’s a little pattern that you see in various
different Imperial or Star Wars [designs].
They’re just random shapes and they allude to a function. And I was
just playing around with these lines, and if you turn his head
upside down, it says my daughter’s name on one side and it says
Luke’s son on the other side.

StarWars.com: Oh, nice! That’s great!

Jake Lunt Davies: It says “Eloïse” and “Isaac.”
But it’s very subtle, because you have to have it upside down and
squint. [Laughs]

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. Well, they are
essentially random lines, so why not make them look less random.
Anyway, that’s where the details on the side of his head come
from.

StarWars.com: Do you have a favorite design from The
Last Jedi that you worked on?

Jake Lunt Davies: I’ll tell you one thing, I
love the porgs. If you’re going to say, “What’s your favorite
thing,” I’m so, so pleased with the porgs. And I’m pleased with the
Caretakers, because they’re a whole race and they’re individuals. I
love everything we’ve just spoken about because they are really
important in the film. They are designs that I hope are very
successful in terms of adding something to the film. I’m really
pleased with them.

Canto Bight aliens photo by Annie
Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

There are other things, though. I like, for instance, one of the
designs which was in the Vanity Fair spread, the Annie
Leibovitz one. There’s a character in there who you can’t really
see. He’s very tall. He’s like 8-foot-tall, this character, and
he’s got a face like a dog. Previously on Rogue One we had
a performer called Derek Campbell, who’s a double amputee. He’s now
doing film work and turning it ’round and using this disability as
a positive thing. He’s getting work using that. We fitted him with
prosthetic legs, which were twice the length of his normal legs,
and very, very thin, so we have this character which you couldn’t
build unless you used a double amputee, because from below his knee
he has these incredibly thin shins. There’s no way any other
performer could pull it off because their feet would be in the way.
So we have this amazing looking, 8-foot-tall alien with impossible
legs, all entirely practical, walking around on set. I suppose I
was really pleased to create something that could make use of Derek
again. We’re trying to break the human form. We’re pushing things
up. He’s 8-foot-tall. He’s not just another 6-foot, 5-foot-tall
alien. He’s of a different scale. So, yeah, I think I was always
quite pleased with managing to get Derek back in and onto his
incredibly long prosthetic legs, which were brilliant.

Dan Brooks is Lucasfilm’s senior content strategist of
online, the editor of StarWars.com, and a writer. He
loves Star Wars, ELO, and the New York Rangers, Jets,
and Yankees. Follow him on Twitter @dan_brooks where he rants
about all these things.

StarWars.com: BB-9E is interesting to me, because you
have the established BB-8 design, and it’s kind of like, how far
can you push it to, basically, make your evil version? So how did
you approach that from the
beginning?

Jake Lunt Davies: This is not wholly my design,
but a combination of some of my design and Luke Fisher’s, who did
K-2SO. Both Luke and I were drawing ideas for BB-9E, the evil
[First Order] droid. I think we both went, “It’s got to be black,
hasn’t it?” [Laughs] So both of our droids were pretty
black. Mine were much more shiny and had this gloss, which carried
over to the final design.

StarWars.com: Yeah, he’s very shiny.

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. Luke’s were a little
bit more matte and I had a slightly more, Apple-esque feel to them.
They were very clean, with sharp lines and a lot more of a Mac
feel. What Luke had got in his one, too, was the head. We both
agreed that the dome-shape of BB-8’s head is actually quite cute.
It’s warm. It’s a nice round shape. And if you add hard edges to
it, it becomes a cone, which is the head Luke drew.

Rian sort of picked up on my designs. I’d done a body. Various
designs, but the one he picked up on had the grille, and it had a
round head with a grille. Rian, I think, said, “I like that head
[Luke’s design] and I like that body.” Because I’d previously
worked on BB-8 on The Force Awakens and had worked
with Josh [Lee] and Matt [Denton], who actually physically made
BB-8, it kind of fell to me to progress with the design and move it
forward, leading the art direction. We had to get the new head to
fit on the same mechanics and, likewise, all the panels to work
with the same mechanics. And what else is there to say on it,
really? It was a combination of Luke’s head and my body.
[Laughs]

StarWars.com: There you go! I wanted to ask where the
grilles came from. They read as threatening.

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. I suppose the
uniformity of each panel is quite nice, having those sort of in
contrast to BB-8. The uniformity of the grille design, I think
helps. The grilles, yeah, they have a menacing thing. The
initial influence was from 1930s vehicle designs — the Chrysler
Airflow and the Peugeot 202 — but I think it led on to a
feeling of prison bars or the menacing faceless grille of a Kendo
mask. These are things, which I suppose you look at and think, “Oh,
intimidating.” The head that I did originally had a grille which
went on the top and around the back. So the sides weren’t grille,
but the grille went from his chin over the top of his head and
around the back of his head. The eye was set behind the grille, so
you could just about see it, and that was his face — – very
influenced by the hidden headlights of the aforesaid Peugeot 202.
That would have been how I originally did it and that was part of
it but, quite rightly, we dropped the round head in favor of the
cone head, which works far better.

StarWars.com: And in terms of dialing in the design,
what was that process like? How do you know if it’s too simple? If
it’s too busy? Because he does have a lot of detailing around his
head and certain detailing on his body.

Jake Lunt Davies: He does. Do you want to know
a little secret about a detailing on the side of his head?

StarWars.com: Sure!

Jake Lunt Davies: Luke had hinted at these
little shut lines. It’s a little pattern that you see in various
different Imperial or Star Wars [designs].
They’re just random shapes and they allude to a function. And I was
just playing around with these lines, and if you turn his head
upside down, it says my daughter’s name on one side and it says
Luke’s son on the other side.

StarWars.com: Oh, nice! That’s great!

Jake Lunt Davies: It says “Eloïse” and “Isaac.”
But it’s very subtle, because you have to have it upside down and
squint. [Laughs]

Jake Lunt Davies: Yeah. Well, they are
essentially random lines, so why not make them look less random.
Anyway, that’s where the details on the side of his head come
from.

StarWars.com: Do you have a favorite design from The
Last Jedi that you worked on?

Jake Lunt Davies: I’ll tell you one thing, I
love the porgs. If you’re going to say, “What’s your favorite
thing,” I’m so, so pleased with the porgs. And I’m pleased with the
Caretakers, because they’re a whole race and they’re individuals. I
love everything we’ve just spoken about because they are really
important in the film. They are designs that I hope are very
successful in terms of adding something to the film. I’m really
pleased with them.

Canto Bight aliens photo by Annie
Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

There are other things, though. I like, for instance, one of the
designs which was in the Vanity Fair spread, the Annie
Leibovitz one. There’s a character in there who you can’t really
see. He’s very tall. He’s like 8-foot-tall, this character, and
he’s got a face like a dog. Previously on Rogue One we had
a performer called Derek Campbell, who’s a double amputee. He’s now
doing film work and turning it ’round and using this disability as
a positive thing. He’s getting work using that. We fitted him with
prosthetic legs, which were twice the length of his normal legs,
and very, very thin, so we have this character which you couldn’t
build unless you used a double amputee, because from below his knee
he has these incredibly thin shins. There’s no way any other
performer could pull it off because their feet would be in the way.
So we have this amazing looking, 8-foot-tall alien with impossible
legs, all entirely practical, walking around on set. I suppose I
was really pleased to create something that could make use of Derek
again. We’re trying to break the human form. We’re pushing things
up. He’s 8-foot-tall. He’s not just another 6-foot, 5-foot-tall
alien. He’s of a different scale. So, yeah, I think I was always
quite pleased with managing to get Derek back in and onto his
incredibly long prosthetic legs, which were brilliant.

Dan Brooks is Lucasfilm’s senior content strategist of
online, the editor of StarWars.com, and a writer. He
loves Star Wars, ELO, and the New York Rangers, Jets,
and Yankees. Follow him on Twitter @dan_brooks where he rants
about all these things.